Jaclyn Desforges

It’s a Thursday afternoon at the splash pad. The air is thick and humid and filled with the joyful screeching of toddlers and big kids as they chase after each other, getting sprayed with streams of ice-cold water at every turn.

I’m hiding under my floppy sunhat, sweating and silently wishing we were running around with them. Instead, my 18-month-old daughter and I are crouched down on the gravel path nearby, inspecting tiny rocks and creating tiny piles. She’s completely focused on her task. She has a vision in her head, and, left to her own devices, she’ll spend the next half hour working diligently to bring it to life.

I am learning to follow her lead as she pulls me towards rocks and flowers, away from crowds of children instead of towards them. The alternative, picking her up, putting her in the place I want her to be—and watching as she turns and runs in the opposite direction—is not exactly effective.

My mother tells me my daughter is exactly the same as I, a card-carrying introvert, was as a toddler. She’s miserable in crowds, happiest surrounded by family, and shows absolutely no interest in other kids, aside from a strange mix of horror and fascination as she watches them from afar.

Part of me is thrilled at having created another being like myself. Now, at age 27, I think I’m pretty great. But a much bigger part of me is terrified that she’ll have to go through what I went through to get here—years of bullying (“What’s wrong with you? Can’t you talk?”) that culminated in some seriously awful self-hatred that persisted into my early twenties.

Introvert shame. It’s a thing, and it starts early. At 18 months old, she already hears people say, “Wow! She’s so quiet.” (She’s not. You should hear her screech “Yay!” when I tell her we’re en route to Grandma’s house. You’re just a complete stranger, and you’re standing way too close.) I lurked on a mommy message board one day and saw a post that read—I kid you not—“My 1-year-old son doesn’t like playing with other kids. Do you think he’ll grow up to be a social outcast? A loner?!”

Loner. When I was a kid, it was the most terrifying label you could get. By middle school, the taunt “Can’t you talk?” began to follow me wherever I went. Class after class was group projects, oral presentations, picking partners for gym, and desperately wishing I could stay in the library and read at recess instead of milling about with groups of other pre-teens.

It was hell. And you know what? Aside from the fact that I’d rather read than kick a ball, I was a pretty normal kid. I always had exactly two close friends, so while I skirted along the edge of loner-dom, I never quite fell in. There were plenty who had it far worse than me, and still do.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m an adult now and rapidly getting too old for angst. Maybe it’s that I’ve carved out a life for myself that celebrates the core of who I am, facilitating writing workshops filled with other introverts. Whatever the reason, when my extroverted husband gets home from work, I happily declare that it’s introvert time and let him take care of our kid while I hide in the bedroom for half an hour and read. And I feel zero guilt, zero self-hatred—only relief.

But still, I’m scared. Scared that while the media may have caught up with the rise of introverts, the school system may not have. Scared that my kid will someday feel torn in two directions between the thing she actually wants to do and the thing she’s expected to want to do. Scared that someday she’ll be standing in a crowd of teenagers, trying to figure out what the hell everybody’s talking about, and someone will sneer and ask her, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so quiet?”

I don’t know if my daughter will end up being an introvert. But if she does, I hope more than anything that she can be the kind who’s proud of herself. I hope she can grow up in an environment where she’s valued for who she is, and not held up against some outdated expectation of how all kids are supposed to be.

And if she ever gets asked why she’s so quiet, I hope she can come up with a witty answer. Lord knows I’ve never been able to.

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It’s relieving to know that introvert shame is a thing a lot of us go through and that you made it through yours. I’m in my early twenties right now and I’m getting hit with it hard, but it’s good to know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… probably around the end of college, I would think.

Mike

From personal experience I think you just have to let children be themselves. My mom, an introvert, tried to push me to be more outgoing and it just didn’t work. I am still, at almost 62, quite shy and introverted. My older son seemed much like me growing up, and other than being much more active in sports than I was, he seemed to grow up much like I did – having few friends and no girlfriends. As athletic as he was, there was one instance in particular where I hurt for him when he was denied a spot on an all-star baseball team because the coach – who didn’t know him – said he was too quiet and didn’t socialize with the other players trying out. His own coach defended him to no avail. I never pushed him and I let him grow at his own pace. While a freshman in college he met a girl from another state on the internet. With her, he has blossomed. They have been together 16 years (married the last 9 years) and travel the world. He plays on two ice hockey teams, has a good freelance job, and they have a small circle of great friends. All without my pushing or prodding him.

tiffany Englander

Beautiful story Jaclyn, thank you for sharing. I also went through the same self hating, introvert shame and I too am afraid that if my child is an introvert they will face the same thing. It was nice to hear that I am not alone in my fears. Even if I can’t protect my child from experiencing introvert shame I am so grateful that we have resources like Quiet Rev and other support groups to help prevent the shame from turning into the self hate that we experienced.